Apple online-music antitrust probe

May 26, 2010 at 4:25 pm

The Justice Departmentreportedly is in the early stages of an antitrust investigation against Apple Inc., the largest seller of music online, looking into allegations that it used its dominant market position to try to keep music labels from granting exclusive access to content to Amazon.com. Law Professor Keith Hylton, an authority on antitrust law, says it makes sense for Apple to trim market support for certain songs when gets a smaller share of the profits from their sale — but they’re gotten aggressive about it lately.

“There are details that might indicate that they have gone too far in some instances; that remains to be seen. Still, in the long run, consumers generally gain from this activity.”